Page 37 of The Orc's Thief
Despite my terror at being discovered, the words soothe some of the jagged edges of my fear. Whoever this is, he’s not attacking me. Not yet, anyway.
“You can’t see in the dark, can you?” the man demands. “Why didn’t you light a fire?”
I squint in his general direction. If the weather weren’t so bad and we weren’t standing in a dense fir forest, I might have had a chance of spotting him. But the darkness is almost complete, and all I see is a faint outline of a person. A very large, hulking person.
“I didn’t want to attract strangers. Though it looks like you didn’t understand that message,” I snipe. “Who are you? Why are you following me?”
I feel the warmth of him before he touches my arm lightly. “I’m right here. We, ah, we met recently. On a rooftop.”
My heart thuds against my ribs. It’s the orc from Ultrup. He followed me all the way out here? Not good.
“You want those letters so badly, huh?” I slowly reach behind my back, where I’ve stashed another knife sewn into the lining of my jacket. “I told you I burned them.”
The stranger lets out a long exhale. “Could you please put that knife away? You can’t see. You’ve a better chance of hurting yourself than stabbing me.”
Damn it.I’ve lost the element of surprise.
“What do you want?” I demand. “You couldn’t have waited until morning to make this visit?”
“No, actually.” He sounds amused, his voice warm. “In an hour or so, the rain will start again, and you’ll be soaked through.”
“And you care about that why?” I put my hands on my hips, annoyed that I can’t even glare at him because I can’t focus my gaze on anything but a shadow.
“That’s a question I’d rather discuss once we’re somewhere dry,” he retorts.
I turn around, keeping my hands outstretched to avoid bumping into any more tree branches. “Thank you, but no. I’m fine here, as you can see. Now please leave. I told you I don’t have your letters anymore, and you told me you don’t care about the gold.”
He actually told me no such thing, and I do still have his letters, stashed in one of my bags, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“Listen,” he says, a touch of impatience coloring his words. “A wolf pack took down a deer not half a mile west of here. That’ll keep them busy for a few hours, but what do you think they’ll do once they scent a lovely horse tied to a tree?”
I stop and lower my hands slowly. “How do you know?”
He must be crouching now, because his voice comes from below me. “Once I found your trail, I scouted around for a place to sleep. Found the spot where you stopped by the stream. Good thinking, moving away from there.”
I close my eyes, since they’re not helping me anyway, and try to focus my other senses. I can’t hear anything but Clover’s shuffling right now. Even the owls and the hedgehogs have quieted, alerted by our conversation.
My first impulse is to send him away. I’m not sure it would work, but surely I’m not supposed to follow the man I robbed when he comes for me in the middle of the night?
But I can’t deny his senses are sharper than mine. He briefly takes my hand and returns the pot of ointment I dropped earlier, along with its cap, which he somehow found in near-complete darkness. If his eyesight is that precise, who’s to say his hearingisn’t, too? If he heard the wolves from half a mile away, he holds a clear advantage out here. I didn’t hear him approach, and I was listening for night sounds. He must be a hunter—someone who knows how to move silently through the forest. I’d be a fool to ignore his warning.
His arrival throws my vulnerability into sharp relief. If he could sneak up on me, couldn’t a pack of wolves do the same? It’s strange Clover didn’t raise the alarm. Either she didn’t hear him, or she did and didn’t see him as a threat. I squint toward where she’s tethered, resentment bubbling up.
Traitor.
The truth is, this stranger could have attacked me, and I wouldn’t have known until it was too late. He’s taller, stronger, likely faster, can see in the dark, and has combat training. I learned as much while studying him in Ultrup. If he wanted me dead, or worse, there’d be little I could do to stop him.
But he’s not doing any of those terrible things. He’s just standing there, waiting for my decision.
“Where are you staying for the night, then?” I ask, folding my arms over my chest.
“There’s a small cliff on the other side of the road.” His voice is calm, though I sense a hint of a smile. “It has an overhang that’ll protect us from the worst of the weather. I put up a tarp for the horses, too.”
I open my mouth to ask for more details, but he’s not done talking.
“We can light a fire, and it won’t be visible from the road, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I haven’t had time to hunt, but we can see about finding some rabbits in the morning.”
Damn it, he seems to have thought of everything.
